March 9, 2001
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Not in My Name
There was an execution today in North Carolina. I am, as won't surprise many of you, vehemently opposed to the death penalty. I think it asks us as a society to take two wrongs and make a right out of it.
The first execution in North Carolina after the late 1970's reinstatement of this punishment was of a man, James Hutchins, who had killed a sheriff's deputy. He was out of his mind drunk at the time of the killing. His sentence went through any number of appeals; in fact, a schoolmate of mine was one of the appellate attorneys. But nothing anyone did saved his life. And that day, in 1984, I was embarrassed to admit to people that I was from North Carolina. See, the State was saying the execution was being done in the name of all the People of the State, by whichever executioner flipped the real switch (there are three, and none of the executioners know which of them has the "real" one to start the poison).
And that just is not true. I am one of the People of the State. And no one was acting in my name. Not that night, nor any other time that a convicted person has been put to death. I would much rather my tax money be used to keep killers in prison, where they have to think about why they're there, for the rest of their lives.
In the case of the first one, there was a huge amount of news coverage. One of my favorite columnists, the late Kays Gary of The Charlotte Observer, was called on by the press association to be the reporter who was witness to the execution. He came away from the experience saying he would never again agree to do this, because, "...any killing anywhere diminishes my own life..." The quote is from his column on March 18, 1984, two days after the execution. I have remembered that quote a very long time now.
Most subsequent executions have not received anything like as much coverage. It's almost commonplace these days. There's always mention of it, and the obligatory shot of an ambulance bearing the body of the newly-executed. But that's about it, unless there are last-minute appeals. That was the situation in this case; there were several last-ditch appeals to state and federal courts, the first of which resulted in a stay of execution for nineteen hours. Instead of happening in the early hours of the day, this execution happened around 9:00 p.m.
Tonight, Willie Ervin Fisher is dead. But again, the executioners were not acting in my name.